By Mike Abbah
The issued Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) documented by the Banks has risen to 30.65 million, according to data from the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System, NIBSS.
It would be recalled that a Federal High Court in Abuja on October 17, 2017 ordered the release of bank accounts without BVN to the government following reports that some customers were yet to comply.
It also called for the forfeiture to the government funds in accounts whose ownership could not be identified and do not have sufficient Know-Your-Customer credentials.
The NIBSS said the figure as at October 22, 2017 was 3.4 per cent increase or 1.001 million additional to issued BVN, compared to 29.653 million BVN which had been issued four months earlier as at July 9, 2017.
Although there are 99 million bank accounts in the country, only 67 million of them are active as at February 2017.
However, data from the NIBSS show that 52 million accounts have been linked to BVN as at February this year, meaning more than 40 million accounts, both active and inactive are yet to be linked to the unique identifier number.
Meanwhile, a total of N56.46 trillion had changed hands through the various electronic payment channels between January and September this year.
According to the Electronic Payments Fact Sheet for first nine months released by NIBSS, the instant payment platform (NIP) had the highest value of transactions with N40.45 trillion that changed hands in 248 million transactions.
A total of 17.33 million transactions with a value of N9.08 trillion had been transacted in through the NIBSS Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT).
Bank customers had continued to make use of Point of Sale (PoS) terminals as 98.73 million transactions valued at N975 billion had been consummated on the 140,448 PoS terminals that had been deployed as at September 2017.
Also, 29.24 million transactions valued at N4.61 trillion had been consummated by bank customers on the 17,051 Automated Teller Machines deployed across the country, while mobile money transactions stood at 35.53 million valued at N795.18 billion done by the 3.2 million mobile money customers
